Links
Blogs and research
Creative Class (Richard Florida)
Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC, Geography Department at Loughborough University)
Space Syntax (Bill Hillier)
White Collars Turn Blue (Paul Krugman on the rebirth of the big city)
Thinking Cities (made by Ericsson as part of their Networked Society series). This short film is about city research and urban projects showing how cities will drive global change. From the introduction: “Cities are the future, and innovations to make them better, smarter, and faster are happening every day.” (Co.Exist, Fast Company, PARS International Corp.)
A Love Letter for London (by Laurie Penny) via Berfrois (@berfrois)
Visualizations
Correlation Heatmap (PwC) Select from the 66 variables to build your custom correlation heatmaps for 26 cities.
Interactive city modeler (PwC) Choose any combination of 26 cities and 66 key variables and compare the rankings.
Architectural Monuments in a Reshaped Beijing (The New York Times) Trace the growth of the city, new Beijing architecture and Olympic venues in this interactive map
The largest migration in history (The Economist) “Migration from inland villages to coastal cities has transformed China. Now that is changing, as regional cities inland become the new focus of migration patterns.”
Photographs and more
Martin Roemers: Living in The New Metropolis New
Lorenzo Linthout: The City of Silence – B&W photography of urban space
Joe Reifer photographs abandoned places
Erik Johansson: Mind your step. Street illusion in Stockholm
Joe Nafis: Shanghai-ed | Shanghai In a Minute
Lee Chapman: Photos: Tokyo Gate Bridge or Dinosaur Bridge. Lee Chapman, “a long-term resident of Tokyo who arrived in 1998 for ‘a year or two’, and, for a plethora of reasons, stayed put”. He is running one of my favourite sites, Tokyo Times.
Philip Bloom: Chicago by boat: A timelapse journey
Dreamer317: timelapse HONG KONG
China’s Ghost Cities (by SBS Dateline) “Vast cities are being built across China at a rate of ten a year, but they remain almost uninhabited ghost towns. It’s estimated there are 64 million empty apartments.“ h/t Franz Traussnig (@offwitz)
The Smog That Ate Beijing by Sean Gallagher, a Beijing-based photojournalist, specializing in covering environmental issues in Asia. h/t Franz Traussnig (@offwitz)
Tokyo Gate Bridge or Dinosaur Bridge by Lee Chapman, “a long-term resident of Tokyo who arrived in 1998 for ‘a year or two’, and, for a plethora of reasons, stayed put”. He is running one of my favourite sites, Tokyo Times.
And here the contrast – a world without cities: Drive Across Mongolia in 4 Minutes – 11 days in a 1.2L Fiat Panda to get from the Russian border to the capital city of Ulaanbaatar (by Spots Unknown)
History
Ricardo Banos: Barcelona en tranvía, 1908
Video A brief visit to Hong Kong in 1960 香港 by MichaelRogge
Video HongKong 1950 to 1960 by MrHklive
Spaces and places real and imagined
Maria Popova: Creative Cartography: 7 Must-Read Books on Maps
Candy Chang: I Wish This Was Many cities are full of vacant storefronts and people who need things. These stickers are an easy tool for them to voice what they want, where they want it …